Friday, August 20, 2004

Odd but true, our coach appeared last night on religious television, discussing football and the catechism with the Franciscans. It’s worth remembering that when the Holy See decided to expand his grace and profit margin into Southeast Asia, a dictum followed his acolytes that all portraits were to display the Son of Man with straight black hair. A friend of mine, given to wearing a shirt proclaiming "DANGER: Educated Black Man", keeps a rendering of the Last Supper in his dining room, the apostle Peter a twin for Lou Rawls.

"Who Made Who[m]?" asks Angus and his guitar. We find the saviors we need, and if Bird Dawg and his ilk were to need one, it would surely be Danny Sheridan bearing the cross.

Sheridan -- who speaks the unspeakable; who watches college football with the passion of a solar-powered calculator; who loves with the fidelity of a pie chart; who sees tradition as fodder for freeway construction; who understands algebra but not athletics; who portrays himself a Karl Popper-esque avatar of our new open society; who, in his dual role as both Cassandra and Orpheus, heralds the BCS scheme, this revenue bursting marketing ploy for ad-friendly unit shifters; whose life is scorecards and debt slips, solipsism and sycophancy, rare steaks and blood rites -- is the go-to guy in the world of sports capping, the man who can talk openly about our dirty laundry, a Dr Ruth for gamblers.

In short, he is the saccharin frosting on a cake of shit.

So when he calls our coach a Barney, you listen. And when he scoffs at the idea of tradition, you accept it. And when he blasphemes against Our Blessed Saint of Rainbow City, who wore an iron cage under his number 12 last season as, week by week, his arm pulled slightly farther from the rest of him and still he peeled himself out of the ground, rose again, and readied himself for the next play with nothing more than that empty tradition and half a playbook to look to, you remember that.